Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Noda City Museum, Chiba-ken

Noda is a place in Chiba prefecture, located near Tokyo. Noda City Museum is the first registered museum in Chiba-ken, in 1959. The building of the museum was designed by a famous architect, Mamoru Yamada. Since Noda is a place well-known for making soy sauce, 醤油 shouyu, you will see inside the museum many tools and materials related to this field. Also, some historical and archeological exhibits. Entrance is free.

The first three kanji are 野田市 Nodashi or Noda city. 野 is field, 田 rice field, and 市 shi means city, town, municipality.

A nice origami I noticed at the entrance.

This is a koto, a Japanese musical instrument with 13 strings. It has an interesting kanji: 箏.

Impossible to take a proper photo through the glass, though such a valuable and beautiful painting depicting the process of making the soy sauce. Although it was first made in Wakayama-ken, nowadays Noda and Choshi are famous places in Japan for producing soy sauce. In Noda there is also Kikkoman Soy Sauce Museum.

Buddha is represented on a lotus with 1000 petals. In India, even the uppermost chakra, called Sahasrara, is described with 1000 petals, referred to as thousand-petaled lotus. Sometimes Buddha is represented with 1000 arms. Japanese people call "very many things" as one thousand. It is a smaller figure though, I think. Like, 1000 statues in Sanjuusangen-dou temple in Kyoto, 1000 jizo statues. Maybe it is less than 1000 actually.

Old shouyu ads:

I think this wooden board is an old tool for washing clothes. I have seen something similar in a film.

In 1661, two families in Noda started to make shouyu and miso.

I like museums very much. I hope you enjoyed this short visit, too. Noda is a beautiful place, and a special friend helped me to discover it.

About Me

I love learning new and meaningful things daily, translating, and travelling. The photos on this blog are from my personal collection. I am always glad to receive your questions and comments. Thank you!